I assume the changes to encourage people not to dash through the operations to earn more XP included the obnoxious increase in swarms and spore mines. I have seen spore mine clusters literally spawn into existence behind a squad mate and instakill them. Not to mention spore clouds now spread out making them difficult to target in a dog pile forcing you to roll around until you die. Additionally the parry mechanic changes have sort of exasperated the issue. It feels like the invulnerability window has been reduced to nothing on pistol strikes making them useless during a swarm as the whip guys basically constantly knock you out of strikes causing you to eat huge amounts of damage.

It is all very unfortunate because it resulted in my squad mates not wanting to play anymore. I have been trying to play solo but with these changes, given the inability to select alt classes as your AI squad (like verm), AI refusing to attack stuff, and the inability to earn armory data till you can clear a higher difficulty with the previous tier's weapons I am starting to get the urge to move on to something else.

I love the potential for this game but unfortunately the industry would rather tune and balance to elite players forcing out anyone else. This is a strange mindset but you see it everywhere. Force out the casual players to build a game designed only for the small percentage of elite players. Big business relies soo much on analytics that they forget how change affects the play experience. There are so many games to play these days that little blunders can cause people to bounce off a game fast and move on which sucks especially for groups that have regular co-op nights.

I agree. I think the spore mines are a cool concept that were poorly executed. In general the things I see ATM that make the game feel sloppy and poorly balanced/broken are:

- In operations like Inferno Neurothropes will spawn in the abandoned facility (in the area with the elevator) with no ammo cache. The elevator blocks you from interacting with it while the Neurothrope is out. This has been a recent problem because the ammo cache hasn't been spawning there and if the squad is out of ammo or runs out of ammo you basically have to wipe. There is no way to progress. You can't run and there is no way to fight the *thropes without ammo.

- Spore mine clouds spawning excessively and instantly while your back is turned catching players for a quick, inescapable death. When playing solo with AI this is a wipe.

- Creatures spawning into areas you have just cleared and insta calling for backup and there is nothing you can do as they are too far away to ever get to in time to stop the call. It seems like the director moves the enemies into the next area if you force the progression as there is always a horde waiting that is larger than the usual hordes.

- Creatures spawning and calling for backup out of bounds where there is no way to reach or prevent the call.

- Creatures doing the red unblockable attacks all at once perfectly timed to stop your pistol strike (feels deliberate and broken).

- The Teleporting guys are all sorts of broken. They have been teleporting out of their red stun phase before you can execute. I had one teleport out after I had started the execution animation which seems like a bug. Maybe this was lag related?

- Auto aim no longer seems to work on spore mines nor the green bramble things Xenos coat the ground with making them difficult for console gamers to clear (ie: you basically just ignore them as it isn't worth eating ammo trying to target the tiny hidden seed in the center of a bramble)

- The volume of the green bramble things that xenos coat the area with. They literally coat the ground for yards at a time and will even surround themselves with bramble. Meltas AOE doesn't seem to clear them unless you literally target them.

- Generally things spawning when you have no ammo or have no way to replenish ammo forcing you to run. This was fine before the bonus XP addition but really isn't very cool after the bonus addition. Sure you can melee your way through things but after all of the horrendous parry and pistol strike nerfs melee isn't worth the risk. It seems much much harder (especially with certain classes like Heavy) to regain armor with the state of the pistol strike changes. Getting knocked out of a pistol strike almost constantly makes it basically useless and makes it much harder to regain armor resulting in faster and more frequent deaths. When playing solo this is a wipe especially in the harder difficulties.

- Zoanthrope green lasers tracking you and changing direction as you roll to avoid. This is fine if the xenos weren't both targeting the same person. If you get caught by the first blast you stun lock and have to eat the follow up blasts. At higher difficulties this is instadeath. When playing solo this is a wipe and waste of player's time.

- Zoanthropes (shield bros) should have line of sight to be able to shield one another. Countless times these damn enemies will be separated by geometry making them difficult to fight. One may be in one tunnel and the other may be in a completely different room or tunnel that is difficult to get to when there is a major swarm. At higher difficulties they change shields so frequently that they aren't even worth fighting solo when one is off somewhere in a different room or tunnel.